Castle: A Novel Read online

  No, that would not do. My solution was to go outside, find a rock, and use it to hold the door shut: inelegant, of course, but good enough for now.

  I had picked up a copy of the Milan phone book from my hotel, and now used it to make an appointment with an electrician. I would need all the outlets to be grounded, and the wiring to be inspected and upgraded if necessary. The electrician said that he could make it on Thursday morning, which was perfectly acceptable.

  My phone, I should add, was quite new—I had bought it before I left for Gerrysburg more than two weeks before. It was a cell phone, of course, and I now added the electrician to my personal directory, where he joined the hardware store and power company. Jennifer, the real estate agent, was still listed as well, so I selected her name and number and deleted them.

  It was getting a bit late in the day, but the electric power would give me the opportunity to work at night. I drove down to Milan and rented a drum sander, then returned to the hardware store and gathered up several packages of sandpaper to fit the sander, in several different grits. I picked up enough finishing wax to coat every floor in the house, and more paint, this time for the interior walls. I also lifted several gallons of water into my cart, and some cleaning supplies, before wheeling over to the bank of cash registers. Most were unmanned, and atop each stood a container of small American flags, the kind that could be mounted on the doorframe of your car. I approached the single register staffed by a checkout clerk.

  The clerk recognized me from my previous trip. He was a tall, thin man, perhaps retired, or maybe a refugee from a previous failed career, and was quite inquisitive. I am not unfriendly, so I responded as politely as I could without rewarding his nosiness.

  “Looks like you’ve got a major project going!” the man said, dragging my cans of paint across the bar code scanner.

  “That’s right.”

  “Bought a house, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Well, good for you. New in town?”

  “No,” I said, as brusquely as possible.

  “We could use some newcomers, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That’s no concern of mine.”

  This quieted him, however briefly. When I had paid, he offered to help me carry my purchases to my car.

  “I’ll be fine on my own, thanks.”

  “Oh, don’t be stubborn, let me give you a hand. Pretty awkward, doing all that by yourself.”

  Finally, I met his gaze with as much directness and authority as I could muster. “What is awkward,” I told him, “is the need to deflect your attention away from my private business. I do not need any help conveying these things to my car.”

  If the clerk was taken aback, he certainly didn’t indicate it with his expression, which was one of mild puzzlement and acceptance, with perhaps a touch of arrogance. He shrugged, held out his empty hands, and said, “Okay, okay. Suit yourself, soldier.”

  I had been about to leave, and had wrapped both my hands around the handle of my heavily laden cart. But the clerk’s method of address pulled me up short. I turned to him now and, bracing myself against the counter, leaned forward.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, quietly and clearly. “But what did you just say to me?”

  The man stood his ground. “I said, ‘Suit yourself.’”

  “You called me ‘soldier.’”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and breathed in through his long, thin nose. “You look like a military man to me.”

  “And I suppose you believe you can tell, do you?”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s right. I was a captain in the First Infantry in Vietnam. Gia Dinh Province. Battalion Intelligence. I did two tours. So, yes, I believe I know a soldier when I see one. Soldier.” And he leaned forward until his nose nearly touched mine.

  I realized at this point that it was not in my best interest to pursue this matter with the hardware store clerk. While he had no right to make assumptions about me based upon his “instincts,” I nevertheless had no wish to denigrate the man’s military service. Nor would it have been prudent of me to alienate the employees of a store that I would doubtless continue to depend upon for the supplies I needed. And, of course, the longer I stood here arguing with the man, the less time I had to accomplish the task at hand, ie., the renovation of my house. So I pulled back, cleared my throat, and disengaged from the encounter.

  “Pardon me,” I said again, this time in a conciliatory tone. “There was no need for me to become hostile. I appreciate your offer of help, but I prefer to be alone.”

  “Fine,” the man said, his expression unchanging.

  “I’m sure we’ll see one another again,” I added.

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  I offered him a final nod of acknowledgment, then took hold of my cart and pushed it toward the sliding glass exit doors. Just as I was about to leave the building, I hazarded a glance over my shoulder. The clerk was still watching me.

  After a day and a half of aggressive cleaning and sanding, I made an interesting discovery. Part of the transfer of ownership of the property involved the creation of a title abstract, a copy of which the bank had given me at the time of closing. The abstract was held in a legal-sized manila envelope, and consisted of a quarter-inch-thick sheaf of papers, stapled at the corner. For some days I had left it sitting in the back seat of my car, as I concentrated upon the renovations. But that afternoon, weariness overcame me: I had overextended myself in my eagerness to complete my labors. I decided to take a break. A light rain was falling, and the air was pleasingly cool, so I took a seat on the newly repaired front stoop of the house, drank from a bottle of water, and paged through the abstract.

  As it happened, the document was fascinating. The legal firm that handled the transfer of ownership had researched the history of the property, and compiled facsimiles of every document it discovered into this compact, convenient package. It was arranged with the oldest information at the back, so that is where I began reading.

  The bottom document was dated October 12, 1933, and consisted of a typewritten history of the property up to that point. Evidently, most of the county had been ceded to the colonial government in 1762 by the Kakeneoke Indian tribe. We can assume that this arrangement was less than fair to the Indians, but its details were not provided in the abstract. The land was not settled immediately, but was used extensively by hunters and trappers up to, and during, the American Revolution. At this time, it was divided into large plots and given to veterans of the war as part of their compensation for military service. My plot was a portion of a much larger plot that had been assigned to a man named Ezekiel Cordwell.

  No information was provided about this man, other than that he had “served honorably” in the Revolutionary War, that he did indeed come to occupy the land, and that he died in 1815. At this time, ownership of the land was transferred to his son, Daniel, and then to another son, Peter, in 1821.

  Apparently no records existed for the years between 1821 and 1904, but it is clear that, at some point during that time, the land was owned by a man named M. Jefferson, for it was he who sold it in 1904. This Jefferson was a farmer and a freed slave, but the documents gave no indication whether or not he actually farmed the land. In any event, by this time the land had been further subdivided, and the plot that M. Jefferson sold had very nearly the same boundaries of that which I had bought—with one important exception that I will reveal in a moment.

  The land was bought by another farmer, Gerald Jones, and some years later—we can surmise during the Great Depression—it fell into disuse. Given the density of the forest at the time of my purchase, it is safe to assume that no farming took place on the land after Jones abandoned his efforts.

  At this point the abstract took a peculiar, somewhat mysterious turn. The next document revealed that ownership of the land was transferred in 1959—but this document differed from the others in one important way. The name of the person who bought it was
carefully blacked out with what appeared to be a thick marker. I held the papers closer to my face and tilted them against the weak gray light of the afternoon, figuring that I could make out the words underneath the ink. But I could not. My copy of this page of the title was obviously a photocopy of the one that had been blacked out—or perhaps even a copy of a copy. I quickly flipped through the remaining pages, and found one additional blackout, on the document describing the purchase of the land by the state of New York. The rest of the land’s history I have already mentioned: the state’s intention to transform it into a public wilderness area, their failure to do so, and finally my own purchase of it.

  I got out my phone and called the law office that had prepared the abstract—their number was printed on each page—to inquire why the previous owner’s name was blacked out, and who had done the censoring. The woman I spoke with declined to give me any additional information. I was irritated, of course. But I understood that further complaint was not, at this moment, to my advantage.

  The curious issue of the blacked-out name, however, was soon overshadowed by the interesting discovery that I have mentioned. One of the new documents near the top of the abstract was a detailed survey map of the property. I say “detailed” primarily because of its impressively specific measurements; these included exact lines of longitude and latitude, and the angle and length of each property line. But the fact was, there was very little detail to be recorded. The house and the lot it stood upon were evident on the southwest corner; the creek that demarcated the northeast corner was also clear. And the rocky crag was shown slightly east of center, precisely where I’d have expected it to be.

  What surprised me was that, pressed up against the western face of the rock, there was a small lopsided quadrilateral that I did not appear to own. This section of land was less than an acre in area, and was filled in on the survey map with a series of diagonal parallel lines. I searched the accompanying text for some explanation, and eventually found, buried in the packed paragraphs of legalese, a single mention: “Beginning at a point marked by an existing iron pin at…”—and here a series of coordinates were given—“and running thence west 80 degrees a distance of 257 feet, 6 inches to an existing iron pin, and running thence south 05 degrees a distance of 194 feet, 3 inches to…”—and here the remainder of the coordinates and distances were given, and the description concluded by saying, “SUBJECT TO the restrictions contained in the deed recorded in the Henford County Clerk’s Office, and the grantor herein certifying that said restrictions have been complied with, the above-described premises are NOT included in the terms of this SURVEY.”

  Now, I am not a lawyer, nor do I understand fully the laws that regulate the real estate market. But this seemed to me a clear indication that a small area of land to the west of the rock did not belong to me. Needless to say, I immediately called the law office once again, and from an assistant there received confirmation that this was in fact the case. That bit of land was not mine.

  “To whom, then,” I asked, “does it now belong?”

  The woman’s voice grew distant, as if she were leaning away from the phone to consult her papers. “Err… ,” she said, “I will probably have to get back to you on that.”

  I persisted. “There is nothing in your records that can answer my question?”

  “I’m sure there is, Mr. Loesch. But it will take some time to find it.”

  “And tell me this,” I went on. “If there’s a bit of land there that someone else owns, it’s logical to assume that there should be a right of way to it, correct?”

  “Ahh… yes, I suppose so.”

  “But it would appear there is no right of way.”

  “Hmm,” the woman said. “Yes. It does look that way.”

  “And so this must be some kind of mistake, correct?”

  She sighed. “I would think so, yes. But as you said, it’s quite clear there on the survey map. And in the text on Schedule A. So it can’t be entirely mistaken.”

  I laughed. “Big mistakes do get made, though.”

  “I suppose they do, sometimes,” she replied. “I’ll have to consult one of the attorneys.”

  “You’ll get back to me about this, then?”

  “I certainly will.”

  Having done all I could to resolve that small mystery, I resumed work on the interior of the house. The process of cleaning each room and sanding its floor gave me ample opportunity to take stock of the place, and really see what it was I had bought.

  I have likely given the impression that the house was entirely empty. This was not, in fact, the case. While steps had obviously been taken by the previous owners to clear out their property, some of their possessions had remained, and I dragged many of them out into the yard, for eventual conveyance to the dump. I would come to a room, remove its contents, clean it to the best of my ability, and get to work with the sander. Thus, a good deal of the former owners’ things passed through my hands.

  The front room, into which a visitor arrived upon stepping through the door, was high-ceilinged, and about twenty-five feet square. High, narrow windows covered two sides, with uninspiring views of Lyssa and Phoebus Roads. When I arrived, torn and moth-eaten curtains hung over these windows, and bits of cardboard or plywood covered some broken panes. Two of the windows had been boarded over entirely. A single chair, of a simple wooden design, leaned against an interior wall, as two of its legs were missing. There was a calendar on that same wall from 1964. It was the tear-off kind, mounted on stiff cardboard bearing the name of a metal fabrication business, and the month of June was on top. There was exactly one thing written on it, in a shaky, left-angled hand: RACHEL DOCTOR 2PM, on Monday the eighth. On the other interior wall hung a penciled drawing of a house—or, rather, a kind of castle, made of stone and turreted, with crenellated parapets, cannon ports, and a broad keep with round-arched windows. The drawing, though clearly the work of a child, was very good, the individual stones carefully traced with mortar in between them, the lines and shadows quite accurate and consistent with a fixed direction of light, the perspective lopsided but nevertheless fairly convincing. The face of a mountain loomed up behind it, and a tiny mountain goat was perched on an outcropping, seeming to peer off into the distance. I threw the broken chair and calendar into my trash pile, but kept the drawing, slipping it in among the legal papers pertaining to the house.

  Off the main room was a sitting room which faced Phoebus Road and the forest; it took up the southeast corner of the building and was not as large as the main room. Here was an overstuffed, velvet-upholstered sofa, which had been water-damaged and which stank, and so out it went. There was also a book, a storybook for older children that seemed to have been checked out of, but never returned to, a library. The spine was missing, exposing the glue that bound the pages together, and the front cover bore only an embossed illustration: a young man, wearing tattered clothes and an expression of grave concentration, climbing up a flagpole. His hand was extended, his fingers mere inches from his goal, which was a piece of wind-tossed cloth tied to the pole’s apex. This, too, I saved.

  The house’s ground floor also contained a smallish study or sewing room, and a large dining room, which was next to the kitchen, in the northwest corner. These rooms were empty, though a crystal chandelier hung in the dining room, just north of center. The space underneath it was bounded by four slight depressions in the pine floor, as if a heavy table had long stood there, and the floor between them bore a haze of scrapes and gouges, evidently made by chairs being pushed toward and away from the table.

  I have to admit that I found these markings strangely upsetting. Nothing, of course, could have been more ordinary—the evidence of a family having shared countless meals—yet I found myself enduring a small shiver of unease. Did the family ever imagine, as they sat together around the table, that this room might someday be empty of everything but cobwebs and dust? I tried to conjure in my mind the sounds and smells that once filled the room, but nothi
ng came to me: the image I formed of the family was that of thin, gray figures, silently hunched over a dark mahogany table, their eyes closed, their hands hanging inertly at their sides. And I pictured them covered with white sheets, as if in storage, and the sheets furred with decades of dust.

  In any event, I shook off these thoughts and set to work with gusto, obliterating with my sander the markings that gave rise to them. I don’t know what came over me—I am not of a particularly imaginative cast of mind. At any rate, once the boards had been sanded, I felt much better, and I was able to complete my work on the lower floor by the end of the day.

  That was Wednesday. Thursday morning, when I arrived at the house from my motel, I found the electrician waiting for me, leaning against his van, looking at a magazine. Some of winter’s chill had returned, and one would have thought it would be unpleasant to stand still. But the electrician seemed content. He was a stocky man of about sixty, and he wore a clean tan jumpsuit, a hunting cap with earflaps, and a pair of fingerless gloves. He held a tall silver thermos in one hand, and sipped directly from the screw top, eschewing the cup, which appeared to be missing.

  He barely spared me a glance as I pulled up, and it was only when I had gotten out of my car and approached him directly that he deftly slipped the magazine into a pocket and shook my hand. “Mr. Loesch? Paul Hephner. Call me Heph.”

  “Thank you for coming, Heph.”

  He tipped his head toward the house. “Bought the place, didya?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” I said. I began to move toward the door, to preclude conversation. “Come on in.”

  At the threshold, Heph slipped a pair of paper covers over his boots. The boots were impeccably clean, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless, not yet having sealed the floors. “I’d like you to check the fuse box and the wiring,” I said. “The basement door—” But the electrician was already there, nudging my rock aside with an impatient foot.